How Covid Extremes Mirror Our Politics

Automotive companies have been known to address discoveries of faulty equipment on already shipped products using simple math.  

If lawsuit damages resulting from consumer loss were projected to exceed the cost of repair or replacement, there would be a recall; if not, then damn the torpedoes.  Though a callous way to conduct business, such measures contribute to a corporation’s financial viability, an ugly truth in our lives.  

While this extreme example is loathsome, our society should find similar ways to balance its approach to risk management.

Like most things in our country, the COVID pandemic, a virus that harbors no political thoughts, has nonetheless been politicized from the start.  Our continued need to get in lockstep with our chosen political tribe has left us predictably susceptible to swallowing damaging information.

The initial overreactions to COVID should be above heavy criticisms.  In dealing with a public health crisis during its early stages when knowledge is scant, erring on the side of caution is prudent.  As more information becomes available, however, adjustments have to be made.  A balance needs to be found between the projected long-term damages inflicted by educational and economic loss, and those from the virus itself.

The public requires greater accessibility to disparate information from our biased media sources.  Many on the right came to believe “It’s just a flu”, or “It’s no worse than a cold”, or, in some extremes, “It’s just a government conspiracy”.  

Many on the left were convinced the sky was falling, and bought into every combative measure (social distancing, masks, extended shutdowns, insufficiently tested vaccines, etc.) - and unfortunately in many cases still do.  

Those who touted such extreme measures often painted themselves into corners and chose to continue piling on to their tribal listeners in order to save face as contrary new information emerged.  They would deny or spin such new information; anything to avoid coming clean about their rushes to judgment and to be able to say “I told you so”.

Appropriate responses to such things require facts, not Liberal or Conservative slants.  

People at higher risk, such as the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions, should have had the opportunity to protect themselves by prioritizing living in quarantine over work or school if they chose.  Minimizing the risk put them in unnecessary danger while exaggerating the risk caused others to make the same sacrifices who might not have chosen to do so given actual truths.  

Most people are inherently reasonable, but indoctrination and reason cannot coexist.  We all want to belong to a club, but when our club leaders say the sky is green, we tend not to question it.  Our people have become political lemmings, who will follow the lead of Fox News or MSNBC right off the cliff.  

Why demand freedom if you don’t choose to think freely?   

“Leaders” who didn’t know any better than any of us insisted that early claims of a Wuhan lab leak were bogus to not rile the Chinese Communist Party and negatively affect related consumerism.  Years later it looks like a legitimate theory, but rather than apologize they pretend it was their view all along.  They called early efforts to block travel from China racist and xenophobic, before backing off in their panic and reversing position.  

Many rushed to take credit for a vaccine that doesn’t work as advertised, then pointed fingers at each other over its shortcomings.  The rest retreated to predictable extremes, either claiming it worked as planned or not at all.  Both are false representations that risk lives.  

The vaccine does help many people, especially those at high risk, but it has also had unpredictable side effects for some, failed outright for many, and has not worked to slow the virus down.  Why is that so difficult to acknowledge?  

The virus itself is terrible and does kill people, but it’s also not species-threatening the way past plagues like smallpox and bubonic were in their times.  Why is that also so difficult to acknowledge?  

I guess reality - which often resides somewhere between the extremes - is just too boring for most people to accept.  Extreme misinformation sells.  

Both sides do this.  The Trump administration was rightly proud of the incredible speed with which a vaccine was fabricated, but later distanced itself when its efficacy was called into question.  The Biden administration took false credit for implementing expanded vaccinations but then propagated lies about its effectiveness to keep the ball rolling and avoid egg on its face. 

Throughout all of this, shutdowns of schools and businesses set back education and wealth by a generation, mostly for a section of the populace whose COVID mortality rates are negligible when compared to other risks that we accept in our lives every day. 

Rather than put healthy people back to work and school, we took the American stance of throwing money at them - money that, it turns out, we didn’t have.  

Predictably, inflation has skyrocketed while the motivation to get back to work has tanked.  Politicians will blame COVID for our situation, an easy scapegoat for which they couldn’t have planned.  But COVID didn’t put us here, their politics did.   

Political leaders will do and say anything that makes them look good and gives them more control.  They can’t be relied upon to provide the truth, because it is often in their best career interests to distort or ignore it.  

As free people in a democracy, regardless of our individual views, we must insist on factual information that we can prioritize according to our own needs.  Both the left and the right need to start holding their own people accountable for providing truthful information, even if it’s politically damaging.  

The presumption of our elected officials that our party-line votes are secure is the greatest motivation for them to ride the status quo.

It’s a fire that we all keep feeding.

Zephareth Ledbetter is the author of “A White Man’s Perspectives on Race and Racism”, available as an ebook at smashwords.com/books/view/1184004, and can be reached on Facebook and Twitter

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.